Monday, February 8th, 2016 Storm Potential

The past few winters have featured February's which not only saw a good deal of cold here across the region but also featured numerous snow events.  February 2016 looks to continue the trend for active February's as the pattern we are entering will be quite favorable for numerous snow chances.  While we just finished with a snow event another one looms on the horizon and just a few days away.

Over the past 24-hours or so, a few of the medium/long-range computer forecast models have featured a decent shift to the north and west with what appears to be a rather significant storm system.  While there is still a great deal of uncertainty with regards to how close to the coast the system will track, the latest trends have been rather interesting.  

Below is a graphic from today's 18z run of the American GFS computer forecast model valid for Sunday evening looking at the 500mb level.  There are two areas highlighted which will be of major interest over the coming few days.  The first area of interest is the northern stream trough which is expected to dig into the United States at the end of the weekend/beginning of the upcoming work week.  How this feature develops and behaves will be extremely critical.  The second highlighted area of interest is the very strong piece of shortwave energy in the southern stream.  This will be responsible for the development of a very strong and rather intense storm which at this time is off the coast.  If this trough digs in faster and sharper (sharper meaning digging further south) it may act to pickup the storm and allow the storm to not only work further north and west but come very close to the coast, perhaps enough to give us precipitation:

The uncertainty right now exists not only because of what was just mentioned above but also due to computer forecast ensembles.  Today's 12z GFS ensembles show some individual members bringing the storm close enough to the coast to give us impacts while other members remain further east.  However, the rather interesting thing to note is how the models have come north and west over the past 24-hours or so.  In fact, even the European model had a shift to the north and west this afternoon.  Below are some of the GFS ensemble members:

As newer data becomes available and the situation should begin to become much more clear.  If overnight computer forecast models continue coming further north and west I think we definitely start having to prepare for a storm on Monday.  However, if tonight's models start going back towards the south and east the potential for impacts will likely decrease.  This will be a pretty potent system so if it does track west enough someone could end up with a quite a bit of snow.  Stay tuned!